Displaying posts published in

February 2023

Killing Jews Brings Light into The Hearts of Palestinians by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19432/palestinians-killing-jews

Just last week, the head of [Fatah], Mahmoud Abbas, received a phone call from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who reportedly promised to put pressure on Israel to halt its “unilateral measures.” Needless to say, Blinken did not complain to Abbas about Fatah’s incitement or the celebration of terror attacks by many Palestinians.

What makes a human being say intentionally crushing an infant beneath the wheels of a car makes the perpetrator a “hero”? What makes them call the car-ramming murder of 8- and 6-year-old brothers a “heroic commando operation”?

This is the result of decades of anti-Israel incitement and brainwashing by Palestinian leaders, which their funders have never told them to stop. As far as most Palestinians are concerned: 1) All Jews are “settlers,” and 2) Israel is one big settlement that must be eliminated.

Furthermore, finding humor in a cartoon of a terror attack victim’s head on a platter about to be eaten as part of a traditional Palestinian feast is hard to comprehend. Why do we keep hearing Palestinians claim that terror and glorification of the murder of innocent civilians is a “natural response”?

There is nothing “natural” about murdering Jewish children waiting at a bus stop. There is nothing “natural” about murdering unarmed civilians outside a synagogue. There is nothing “natural” about dancing and handing out candy to celebrate terrorism and the murder of Jews, or of anyone.

The EU, the US, and other international funders of the Palestinians continue to finance a government that refuses not only to condemn terror, but that actually grows it like a lucrative slave-farm for terrorists. For some Palestinians, such as the leaders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, that even includes sending women and children to blow themselves up and using babies as human shields. The leaders do not, of course, send out members of their own families for this “achievement.”

Sadly, these funders do not even ask the Palestinian leaders, as a condition of their funding, to stop calling for violence and to stop rewarding murder. One has to ask: Why not? If you go to a bank and request a mortgage, the bank will stipulate conditions. That is “natural.”

Considering the undisguised vitriol of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in support of terrorism — with both words and money — how could Israel seriously be expected to engage in any fruitful peace talks with the Palestinians?

After the recent wave of terror attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank, Palestinians again took to the streets to celebrate the murder of Jews. As part of the celebrations, the Palestinians danced, chanted slogans in support of the terrorists and handed out sweets to passersby.

Joe Biden Fiddles With World War In Ukraine As U.S. Border, Railways Burn By: Joy Pullmann

https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/20/joe-biden-fiddles-with-world-war-in-ukraine-as-u-s-border-railways-burn/

Where is Biden as his country is in flames? Hiding from his crimes against Americans and our Constitution by urging atrocities in Ukraine.

Americans received a pristine view of Democrats’ disastrous America-Last policies this morning as Joe Biden paid a surprise visit to Ukraine while his own country literally burns with manmade disasters he continues to inflame.

Biden’s Federal Emergency Management Agency denied any money to help clean up a burning chemical disaster zone in the Republican state of Ohio, but Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear that Biden will get a blank check to slosh around hundreds of billions from U.S. taxpayers to prolong the carnage of war in Ukraine — and the profits from it from insane deficit spending that also threatens U.S. national security.

Not only is key U.S. infrastructure on fire stateside, but Biden, in violation of his oath of office, also set the U.S. border figuratively on fire immediately upon assuming the presidency by lifting former President Trump’s effective enforcement of U.S. national security laws. Cities and towns across the United States are overwhelmed with mass human trafficking and the outsourcing of U.S. border control to international drug cartels allied with the top U.S. foreign adversary, Red China.

It’s no surprise that American support for expanding the U.S. proxy war with Russia is declining. They can see that their neighbors have to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for health insurance even if they never see a doctor because they’re really paying off the health expenses of illegal migrants, and that their neighbors are dying from the fentanyl trafficked with the human flood of misery across the border.

Anatomy of a Cover-up: The January 6 Tapes Like all good political scandals, the path to the truth begins with the tapes. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/20/anatomy-of-a-cover-up-the-january-6-tapes/

Tucker Carlson now has the equivalent of nearly five years of surveillance footage captured by U.S. Capitol Police security cameras on January 6, 2021. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) turned over the tapes to the Fox News host  earlier this month, according to Axios. Carlson’s producers and researchers are already distilling the footage; the first round of clips is expected to air in a few weeks.

While some grumble that McCarthy did not fulfill his promise to publicly release the footage—arguably a valid complaint—Carlson’s team undoubtedly will give the massive trove much-needed context and maximum impact. Carlson released a three-part documentary, “Patriot Purge,” in November 2021 that explained how the events of January 6 helped launch a second “war on terror” against American citizens out of step with the Biden regime.

Since early 2021, Carlson has used his nightly show to expose the cruel treatment of Trump supporters suffering pretrial detention orders; raised questions about the use of undercover assets including FBI informants and the mysterious role of Ray Epps; asked why the case of the January 5 “pipe bomber” remains unsolved; and demanded the release of the surveillance video as late as last month.

Releasing the video never should have been a political fight; after all, the footage was recorded on a taxpayer-paid closed circuit television system installed on public property to monitor public employees. Contrary to arguments by Capitol Police and the Justice Department, the video belongs to the public, not federal agencies.

But both entities, with the help of D.C. District Court judges, have successfully kept the trove largely under wraps for more than two years. Even the FBI and D.C. Metropolitan Police departments signed agreements a few days after the Capitol protest to acknowledge that the tapes technically belonged to Capitol Police.

In a sworn statement filed in March 2021, Thomas DiBiase, general counsel for the Capitol Police, insisted the footage constituted “security information” that required very limited access. “Our concern is that providing unfettered access to hours of extremely sensitive information to defendants who already have shown a desire to interfere with the democratic process will . . . [be] passed on to those who might wish to attack the Capitol again,” DiBiase warned.

The Toxic Racialist Obsessions of Joe Biden Somehow Biden has transferred his own checkered history of racial disparagement onto the white working class. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/20/the-toxic-racialist-obsessions-of-joe-biden/

Joe Biden ran on “unity,” which is critical in a multiracial America. He vowed to heal the divisions supposedly sown by Donald Trump. Instead, he is proving to be the most polarizing president in modern memory. Often his racialist rhetoric and condescension have proven demeaning to both blacks and whites. In a volatile multiracial democracy that demands tolerance and restraint, a highly unpopular Biden, for cheap political advantage, continually proves incendiary and reckless. 

Last week Joe Biden snarked after watching a White House screening of Till:

Lynched for simply being black, nothing more. With white crowds, white families gathered to celebrate the spectacle, taking pictures of the bodies and mailing them as postcards. Hard to believe, but that’s what was done. And some people still want to do that. 

 Exactly who are these “some people”? Who fits Biden’s innuendos of contemporary “some people” who, he alleges in 2023, still wish, as “white crowds, white families” of the past, to mail celebratory postcards after they lynch black people? The Ultra-MAGA villains of his recent Phantom of the Opera speech? Have his current targets ever echoed anything like Biden’s own racist past warning that busing would force people to “grow up in a racial jungle”?

What current data might support Biden’s absurd charges? Is Biden referring to federal interracial crime and hate crime statistics charting violent white propensities against blacks? None exist. In fact, they continually reveal that so-called whites are underrepresented as perpetrators in both categories, while overrepresented as victims in interracial crimes—dramatically so in the case of black-on-white violent crime.

In our sensationalist YouTube world, are we suffering an epidemic of Internet-fed, white-on-black incendiary crimes that might have prompted the president’s demagogic accusations? Not at all. Most of the most recent publicized interracial violence—a woman in a gym fighting off a would-be rapist, a bicyclist doctor stabbed to death in an intersection as his attacker spewed racial hatred, a 26-year-old mother lethally shot in the back in front of her children in front of her children in a parking lot over a minor argument, a young boy violently choked on a bus, a small girl on a bus beaten repeatedly by two teenage boys—have involved black perpetrators and apparent white victims. So, what contemporary evidence or widely publicized anecdotes prompt Biden’s recent charges of “white rage”-fueled violence?

Biden Administration Funds Anti-Netanyahu Protest Group A coup in Israel is backed by Washington D.C. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-administration-funds-anti-netanyahu-protest-group/

Even while Israeli children were being murdered by terrorists, the only thing the media wanted to talk about were the leftist protests against the new Israeli government’s democratic judicial reforms. And the Biden administration has joined this campaign attacking the move.

Israel’s new conservative government under Prime Minister Netanyahu has finally initiated the long overdue process of restoring democratic checks and balances by limiting the unlimited power of Israel’s Supreme Court. And the Left has threatened everything up to civil war to protect its illegitimate power while its angry protests have been spun as grassroots opposition.

What none of the news reports, editorials, public letters by prominent figures or statements by officials have revealed is that the Biden administration is funding the group behind the protests.

As David Isaac at JNS reported, the first major rally against democratic judicial reform attended by leftist opposition politicians was organized by a group known as the Movement for Quality Government. MQG receives annual funding from the State Department to purportedly conduct “classes” on democracy in Israeli schools. The State Department is well aware that MQG has a long history of waging lawfare against the Israeli government because its work has been cited in its “human rights” reports. While State Department funding was not programmed for protests, money is fungible and the Biden administration knows it’s funding an anti-Netanyahu group.

The Covid Lockdown Disaster: Three Years Later Beginning in March 2020, many bad decisions were made that will impact untold numbers of young people for the rest of their lives. by Larry Sand

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-covid-lockdown-disaster-three-years-later/

There has been nothing but awful news about the unnecessary Covid-related shutdown of American schools. Study after study and a mass of anecdotal evidence show the harm done by the forced lockdowns.

Yet more research, released in January, extends the grim scenario. A meta-analysis of 42 studies across 15 countries assessed the magnitude of learning deficits during the pandemic, and finds “a substantial overall learning deficit…which arose early in the pandemic and persists over time. Learning deficits are particularly large among children from low socio-economic backgrounds.”

The analysis finds the losses are larger in math than in reading and in middle-income countries relative to high-income countries. The learning progress of school-aged children slowed substantially during the pandemic and overall, students lost about 35%, of a school year’s worth of learning. One of the studies included in the analysis found that the average public school student in third grade through eighth grade lost half a year of math learning and a quarter of a year in reading.

Two countries, Sweden and Denmark, managed to avoid the upheaval. Swedish children experienced no learning loss because they were not subjected to mass school closures during the pandemic. While Denmark did have closures, it is theorized that the lack of learning loss could be attributed to the country’s “reliable digital infrastructure with Denmark being one of the absolute top-scorers in digital skills, broadband connectivity, and digital public services in Europe.”

“Hatred, Fueled by Identity Politics, as a Unifying Force”Sydney Williams

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Theodore Roosevelt’s rebellious daughter, is supposed to have quipped: “If you haven’t anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.” Regardless of the quote’s validity, most of us were taught that “speech is silver, but silence is golden” and that “love conquers hate.” However, Vanessa Van Edwards, the behavioral scientist and author of Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People, says her research suggests that Alice may have been on to something. People form stronger bonds when they talk about someone they hate rather than someone with whom they have positive feelings.

Hatred, often coupled with tribalism, has been prominent throughout history and has led to millions being killed. Hatred of Native Americans, as well as desire for more land, was a motivating factor in opening North America to European settlers. Hatred for blacks in southern U.S. states led to an estimated 4,400 of them being lynched between Reconstruction and World War II.

Why ‘The Right Not To Be Offended’ Is Offensive Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/20/why-the-right-not-to-be-offended-is-offensive/

This is the last of our series about the worship of false idols and how these secular religions are eroding the fabric of our society. (The previous columns appeared  here, here, and here.) Climate obsession, the concept of ensuring equal outcomes as opposed to equal opportunity, and the unmooring of gender from biology have profound implications, but these generally do not have as pervasive effects as the imaginary “right not to be offended” and its progeny, self-censorship.

Claiming to be offended has become a weapon to exert control over others that is neither justified nor deserved. It is, itself, offensive, to say nothing of annoying.

For instance, a recent study conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found, among other perceptions of a stifling environment, that more than two-thirds of students feared for their future if they said the wrong thing. This is hardly an isolated example of fear about hurting somebody’s feelings. Looking back, many of us laughed at “participation trophies” in everything from athletic competitions to spelling bees, because they made a mockery of genuine achievement. The concept was rooted in the belief that those who did not possess exceptional skills should be sheltered from disappointment – despite the near certainty that they were well aware of their skill level and limitations.   

Will Biden’s Ukraine Trip Inspire Even More Of His Lies?

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/21/bidens-ukraine-trip-an-inspiration-for-more-of-his-lies/

President Joe Biden made a “surprise” visit to Ukraine Monday. It doesn’t take a cynic to wonder how many tales from the trip he’ll come up with to pad his already bursting catalog of self-aggrandizing lies, which the media has mostly ignored for decades.

We can imagine Biden in the coming months telling audiences that “we were shot down twice” as the Air Force Special Air Mission jet approached the Rzeszow airport in Poland near the Ukraine border, and then while visiting the front, the Ukrainian forces “let me shoot some of their artillery,” which was particularly rewarding because “I know I killed bunch of Russkies and took out Corn Pop, too.”

“It reminded me,” he’ll say, “of when I was storming the beach at Normandy in ’44.”

All too much? Not even Biden would go that far in concocting some outlandish fables to make himself look better than the dolt he is? Of course he would. That’s what he does. Remember when:

Biden lied about how “his plane was fired upon” while he was flying in the Balkans, and below “bombed-out homes with snipers inside could be seen”?
During a speech he told the audience he knew “where Al Qaida lives” because it was “the area where my helicopter was forced down with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains,” but failed to mention the flight had to land due to snow and there were no terrorists around?
He told mine workers that “I am a hard coal miner,” and another time said his ancestors were coal miners, when of course he wasn’t and they weren’t? 

The CDC’s Long-Covid Deception A recent study exaggerates the incidence of postviral symptoms among young adults and deflects attention from misconceived pandemic policies By Allysia Finley

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cdcs-long-covid-deception-depression-anxiety-vaccine-mandate-university-gwu-testing-mental-health-48bdd11b?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Many liberals label themselves “pro-science” as if that’s a political position. Then again, so many putatively scientific studies seem intended to promote progressive policies rather than advance scientific knowledge. Such studies then get amplified by the media and self-appointed experts on social media.

Consider a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that claims to find that nearly 36% of Covid cases among students, faculty and staff at George Washington University resulted in “long Covid.” The study suggests that young, healthy people face a high risk of chronic debilitating symptoms after infection despite being at low risk of getting severely ill with the virus.

The study also finds that the unvaccinated were at more than twice as high a risk of developing long Covid as those fully vaccinated who had gotten boosters. This sounds plausible. But drill down, and it becomes clear that the evidence is too thin to draw any conclusions.

Like many colleges, George Washington University held classes online during the first year of the pandemic even as some students returned to campus. Those on campus were required to undergo weekly Covid testing. During the 2021-22 school year, classrooms reopened but students were required to be vaccinated and later boosted.

The college recorded 4,800 Covid cases between August 2020‒and February 2022. Those who tested positive were later asked to complete 15- to 20-minute surveys about their health and behavioral changes. Only one-third completed the surveys, and those who did might have been more likely to report lingering health problems—a phenomenon known as nonresponse bias.

The study suffers from two other major methodological problems. First, it doesn’t include a control group of students and faculty that weren’t infected. The finding that nearly 36% reported long Covid symptoms is meaningless without such a sample to determine how common such symptoms were among people who never had Covid.